Nature Morte

Medium: Oil On Canvas
Size: 65 x 54 cm (25.6 x 21.3 in)
Signed: Signed, inscribed, and dated verso: G. Severini/nature morte/Paris 1917.

Provenance: Léonce Rosenberg Gallery, Paris, 1917; Van Lier Gallery, Amsterdam circa 1931; Acquired there by A. Guermonprez (a prominent photographer associated with the Bauhaus) and Trude Jalowitz Guermonprez (died 1976, who worked as a fabric designer and weaver for the Bauhaus); 2nd husband of Trude Guermonprez, and to their children in California.

From a compositional point of view, this work can be compared to some others from the same period, already documented in retrospective exhibitions and in the Severini family photographic archives. One may observe obvious affinities in the compositional rhythm of several of the still-lifes from this date. A rhythm is developed through the assembling of objects that are sometimes not easily decipherable, de-constructed and simultaneously re-constructed, by bringing together totally abstract chromatic planes and silhouettes, suggesting a rising volumetric impulse. Note, for example, the formal analogy between the vase in the upper section of Nature morte: Quaker Oats, (London, Estorick Collection, Fonti no. 283), de-composed on the right, and re-composed on the left half in the rhomboidal shape and with an isolated object in the middle.